Keypad Keeper Template

A Great Resource for teaching kids how to use numerical keypad.

Is public education largely a value-chain business?

The framework of a value chain is the delivery of a mix of products and services (wiki). It identifies where the value is added in an organization and links the process with the main functional parts of the organism. In education value is defined by the students. The chain includes identification of competence needs, learning/competence development and the use of competence performance (Hansen 2007). In the text the author references students being herded into a classroom at the beginning of the school year, and at year’s end having value added to them when they are promoted to the next grade. The product can best be identified as textbooks which are developed utilizing a states comprehensive curriculum as the guide. The decisions of this curriculum are developed by elected officials, administrators, and teachers. The information is then delivered to the student by the teacher, who is providing the service (Christenson et al).

Are Clickers Right For You and Your Classroom?

Clickers are also called Classroom Response Systems. The clickers look like remote controls. Clickers are anonymous to the whole group, but can be identified by number by the teacher/facilitator.

The benefits of utilizing a clicker provides for:
1. Engagement,
2. Increased interest,
3. Increased discussion.

Using Clickers to Access Data:
Benefits
1.Immediate feedback for both teachers and students.
2.Teachers are able to evaluate and identify learning gaps. Clickers allow for informal assessments.
3.Presented using a gamers approach with graphics, which is ideal for digital natives lending them to have a more postive outlook on materials presented.

Research done by Margie Martyn concluded that there wasn't any significant change in outcomes between students who utilized clickers and others who didn't, which resulted in questions related to Return on Investment. This can only lead one to suggest that there are other links to student success while utilizing clickers and it could be tied to other aspects of teaching pedagogy.

Using Clickers to Access Data:
Drawbacks/Concerns
1. Lack of paper trail for disputing answers
2. Cheating- A student could use someone elses'clicker
3. Tech problems- Issues of a clicker not responding to a quesion and the question being marked wrong.

Reference:
Clickers retrived on October, 5, 2011 from http://ocio.osu.edu/elearning/toolbox/depth/clickers

Kelly K.G.Student Response Systems in the Psychology Classroom: A Beginners Guide. retrieved on October 5, 2011 from http://teachpsych.org/otrp/resources/kelly09.pdf

Martyn, Margin.(2007) Clickers in the Classroom: An Active Learning Approach.

Free Race Car/Track Bulletin Board Kit

One day I had an idea and took to photoshop and within a few minutes I had a complete bulletin board kit. I thought I would share it with you, the only thing you need is a color printer, have fun!! This is a free download.

Teacher Guide to Accessing Last Session Reports: Successmaker 4

Blogging as A Learning Tool

What is a Blog?
A blog is a website where individuals write commentaries on an ongoing basis. Visitors can comment or link to a blog. Some writers use blogs to organize thoughts, others use it to to gain web influence.

There are numerous types of blogs and topics that people choose to write about here are a few:
*Chronicles of life experiences
*Blogs about unique perspectives such as news, and politics
*How to/tutorial blogs
*Personal blogs

Integrating the use of Blogs as a Teaching Tool could be done by a teacher who posts an assignment, discussion topic, or a theme on a blog and could require students to respond.
The teacher who uses blogging as a tool will focus less on content delivery and more on student discovery.

Advantages:
*One advantage to this is that students can log on at different places and times.
*Blogging should be used to engage students and to stimulate thinking.
*Blogging makes way for more self-directed learning, and peer to peer collaboration.

Hands on Teachers meet hands on Learning

This is a great site for teachers by ipad and a wonderful way to have an ipad introduction to the possibilities of usage in the classroom take a look and I'm sure you will see this is a great beginning to a new wave of teaching.
http://education.apple.com/ipad-learning/